Children are not in charge of themselves. They're in the charge of their guardians. As minors, their rights are held in trust by their parents though that doesn't preclude them from still having rights of their own. You can try to protect a child from himself but educating a child works better than just barring him from doing something. You don't just tell him not to touch the stove, you tell him it is hot and will hurt him. Often the child touches the stove anyway because that's the problem of free will--he still has the choice to not listen to you. You can tell people cigarettes cause heart disease and cancer but you can't keep them from smoking anyway.
Whether you approve of the ethics or not, you are held to them by choosing to work in the medical field. As you have now opted out of that, you're not held to those same ethics. You are however bound by the laws that have codified those ethics into law.
If you tell me that for security purposes I must wear a tracking bracelet, I'm inclined to believe you because you're the head of security and I expect and trust that you will serve in that post in an ethical and appropriate manner. If you use that bracelet for reasons beyond what you have told me it is for--say, you are also performing hypothetically harmless experiments on me at the same time--you have violated that trust and when I find out, your job will be many times harder because I will not only NOT trust you anymore and work against your security measures but I will tell other people what you have done.
Free will, and the ability to, in the end, make your own decisions in life is the only thing that makes life worth anything. Acting against free will, violating free will, violating personhood, is wrong.
And you are arguing precisely that, Forge. You said very clearly that you consider your interests more important than ethics, law and the basic respect for your fellow humans.
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Date: 2007-03-12 07:42 pm (UTC)Whether you approve of the ethics or not, you are held to them by choosing to work in the medical field. As you have now opted out of that, you're not held to those same ethics. You are however bound by the laws that have codified those ethics into law.
If you tell me that for security purposes I must wear a tracking bracelet, I'm inclined to believe you because you're the head of security and I expect and trust that you will serve in that post in an ethical and appropriate manner. If you use that bracelet for reasons beyond what you have told me it is for--say, you are also performing hypothetically harmless experiments on me at the same time--you have violated that trust and when I find out, your job will be many times harder because I will not only NOT trust you anymore and work against your security measures but I will tell other people what you have done.
Free will, and the ability to, in the end, make your own decisions in life is the only thing that makes life worth anything. Acting against free will, violating free will, violating personhood, is wrong.
And you are arguing precisely that, Forge. You said very clearly that you consider your interests more important than ethics, law and the basic respect for your fellow humans.